Glazer: The Rise & Fall of Todd Haley and The Long, Sad Road Ahead

Well, by now you have all heard Chiefs coach Todd Haley is toast in KC…

Maybe that’s a good thing for Mr. Haley. Change was needed. There’s no need to dwell on the why, other than a couple points. Losing, hatred (which I told you back in September) between Todd and general manager Scott Pioli and no overall success.

One thing I have written about and talked about on radio is this: last year was not really much of a success. By year’s end the Chiefs were a bottom tier team – bottom 7 or 8 for sure. They had nothing other than a scat back named Jamaal Charles and a couple good-but-not great defenders in Tamba Hali and Derrick Johnson. Oh yeah, and D-Bowe. Not enough to build a winner with.

No quarterback, no titles.

We all know Pioli deserves the same fate. He’s been pretty terrible. Just a few good picks and almost no good trades. You need talent to win and we have very little. I don’t think any coach could have done that much with this mess.

Haley wants to look and act young and he is fairly young.

Scott wants a more buttoned down type. More like himself. Scott and Todd are both boring speakers. But the Patriot Way is a joke. No interviews (few with any real information), no player radio or TV shows, no real interaction with the fans.

That might work if you are a winner, but it doesn’t work if you are a gawdawful, which this team has been for decades.

Lets face it, we have not had but one real winning quarterback since Len Dawson, who is my father’s age, near 80. Only Joe Montana brought us two playoff wins in one season and a spot in the AFC title game. That’s it.

Our only close to decent developed quarterback was Elvis Grbac who lost in the post season’s first game.

The Chiefs have lived off the 60’s and early 70’s for nearly half a decade. Our fan base is now sobering up to the fact we are the Cleveland Browns and have been for too many decades.

Yes, Marty Ball worked to get us into the playoffs several times, but other than twice, we lost in the first round. Since then we have had no very good teams. And that includes the phony 2003 Dick Vermeil 9-0 start. A team that was the NFL’s worst all-time defense by season’s end.

Nothing anyone outside of this city remembers much or any of all that.

Who’s next? They will try for Jeff Fisher but six other teams want him. I don’t see the Chiefs paying $10 million a year for him and he may get that.

Why come to a big loser like the Chiefs with no quarterback and none in sight?

Todd Haley may have been a good coach but we’ll never know. He had nothing to work with. By the way the injuries this year DID NOT MATTER. CASSEL is a joke and those other players would not have won even two more games for us.

This club is lucky to be 5-8 or end up 5-11 or 6-10, where they belong. LAST. And that’s not all, or nearly all, Todd Haley’s fault.

I met him. I liked him. I feel kinda bad for him. Can’t say he’ss good or bad…can you?

Haley’s VomitLook at the train wreck that the Denver Broncos were pre-Tebow. John Elway and John Fox, two guys that actually seem to like each other and WANT TO WIN took lemons and made lemon-ade. Tyler Palko isn’t Tim Tebow but he’s mobile enough to run a read option offense. We have adequate backs that should perform well in that style of offense. The defense has shown that it can play when it has its’ collective head in the game and not up their asses. The Chiefs could have done much better this season. No reason they should have not won the division again. In my opinion Todd wanted out. He can’t handle adversity. He felt that he had no future here so he threw in the towel. HE QUIT! Cut his losses, got fired and is moving on. He’ll have a job before the start of the 2012 training camps. Meanwhile the dynamic duo of dueling cunts; Clark Hunt and Scott Pioli gotta make some sausage without anybody watching.

The whole organization is just putting in time and picking up paychecks. That attitude starts at the top. With lucky sperm Clark and I’m a HOODIE Scott you’re not gonna get a lot of testosterone flowing down the totem pole into the locker room making guys wanna skull fuck the other team. At best they offer a whiff of Summers Eve feminine hygiene spray.

FIRINGS THROUGH THE YEARSthen & now, Chiefs style… whether due to concerns limited vocabulary or lagging x4 attendance, W/L record, charisma or affinity the razor, the word ‘panache’ does NOT come to mind.

The first –

Hank Stram was fired after the ’74 season depsite it being his first losing season in the previous 11 years. Why? The team was old by then, yet they were still post season contenders every year but the last. Local businesses & advertisers as well some fans were down on Stram, his ‘banty rooster’ way not playing as well then as it had when the Chiefs were winning big. He was let go more so due to dwindling ticket sale$ for a newer stadium WAY overbuilt with almost 83,000 seats – upshot, paraphrasing EF Hutton, ‘when money talked, Lamar Hunt listened’.

Hank had the last laugh though; the Chiefs are still wondering the football wilderness almost four decades later. Then he came back in 1976 as Head Coach of the New Orleans Saints & beat the Chiefs in Arrowhead – scoring a late td instead of taking a knee though the Saints already had the game won… pricele$$.

Of note, on the sidelines Stram was an walking endorsement for GQ magazine: sports coat, vest, tie, even a dress hat until the ’70’s. That was in the days the NFL didn’t require coaches to wear their team’s clothing with official logo$ – cha-cha-ching! – most coaches actually dressed like an executive.

The last –

2011, Todd Haley was fired in season. Why? He leaves having ensured himself of a second losing season in his three years, yet home attendance is still almost 72,000 per game, with arguably the be$t home draw of the year coming up in the GB Packers. So both of those factors – losing season’s 67% of the time but no dwindling attendance – are different than the scenario Stram faced.

That he presented himself on the sidelines/dressed like most every other Head Coach circa 2011 – a walking billboard for NFL avarice via enforced team approved logo attire – is also a difference compared to Stram, as were his lip acoustics. That his GM Scott ‘Garbo’ Pioli may not have been enamored of Haley, personality conflict? Reportedly, Hank Stram and his superior (Jack Steadman) were also (according some reports) not bosom buddies, least by the end of 1974.

Yes, clearly Haley was no Stram on the coaching field, via the wardrobe or as a conversationalist (compare Stram’s “just matriculate the ball down the field” with Todd’s &!@# tack.) Appears however that if he had been able to duplicate the W/L record of 2010 in 2011, he would probably still be here, beard, sweaty cap & allocution being beside the point. Remember too that Pioli stated upon his hire he wanted his Head Coach to be the ‘face’ of the franchise.

Herm Edwards was quoted in the days before his release saying “I hope I’m coming back”, while Clark Hunt was quoted saying “I hope Herm is back.” Then Pioli just 1 1/2 weeks into his hiring, came out of hiding long enough to annouce Herm was fired “after careful deliberation”; his year one busts now number those first 3 signature moves: Haley, Jackson & Cassel… he’s looking more like Matt Millen every day.

Another firing franchise history was personality based, least as a component if not just an aside, hindsight. 1986 John Mackovic leads KC to post season for the first time in 15 years and viola – MUTINY, fired. Management ok’d the ouster and the successor – enter Frank ‘Crash’ Gansz who won less games in 2 years than Mackovic won his final season alone… preference personality > performance scoreboard, Steadman & Schaff working their magic.

Speaking of a guy with personality – Gunther Cunningham – was his tongue any less acidic than Haley’s? He worked for Peterson – twice as it happened. The question: was a report he found out about his termination by way the internet true? Reportedly, he found out about it on the Chiefs own website after coming in to work that morning… awkward but then, oh so Kansas City Chiefs.

Missing the PointYou are make good points, but not the MAIN point. The Chiefs have NO offensive line – NONE. Did anyone catch the week 4 Jets game when they lost their star center Mangold? The ENTIRE offense fell apart and they lost miserably. Just look at the Jackie Battle play last Sunday that resulted in a safety. The offensive line could not hold and the Jets defense walked right over them and tackled Battle for a safety. Our defense is fine. What we need is an offensive line. Even if we had Tom Brady as a QB, he would never shine because our O-line would be able to protect him. Jamaal Charles was successful because he was the only player who had the speed to get the hell out of the backfield and AWAY from the opposing D-Lines who were tearing through with little or no effort.

It won’t matter who we have at QB as long as our Offensive line is weak. The Chiefs problems need to be addressed in the following order:

1. Clark Hunt – spend some damn money – NOW.

1. Offensive Line – bigger guys up front – our line is too small

2. Head Coach / Possible GM replacement as well

3. Quarterback – let’s go young and think about building a franchise guy